Secret Wars 2: Sweet Baby Jesus!

Everything I needed to know about the Incarnation I learned from Marvel Comics.

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The MCU's Big Bang

You know I love me some Tolkien, but an even more formative influence on my own understanding of the Incarnation came at the end of Marvel Comics’ Nine-Issue Limited Series Secret Wars II. The story, which follows on the heels of the incredibly successful Secret Wars— the high-water mark of my own comic-collecting phase— suffered from the same excess and anti-climax of most sequels. Bigger, louder, bloated and ultimately less satisfying than its predecessor.

In the original Twelve-Issue Limited Series a formless, omnipotent God-like entity called the Beyonder ripped a hole in the fabric of the Universe, slammed a bunch of planets from different galaxies together to form a super-planet populated with all sorts of strange and monstrous alien life, and then teleported a who’s-who of Earth’s superheroes and villains to the far reaches of space for the ultimate cosmic battle. His booming voice warbled from the Heavens, “...slay your enemies and all you desire shall be yours!”

GAME ON, like DONKEY KONG

Doctor Victor Von Doom led the villain squad which frankly, apart from Ultron, Galactus and Doom himself ,was a bit underwhelming. Doom managed to overthrow the Beyonder to become God of the Universe for an issue or two, which was pretty cool. Turns out that being omnipotent doesn't change your character, it just reveals it. Who knew?

The hero side had the Avengers, X-Men, and the Fantastic Four (minus Susan Storm-Richards, who was pregnant back on Earth). Spider-Man had a banner week, as not only did he kick the shit out of the X-Men, who frankly had it coming, but he discovered the alien entity in Issue #8 that became his original Black Suit, and later morphed into the monstrous, shape-shifting Venom. I’ve still got #8 wrapped in its mylar sleeve, and 30+ years later I’m a bit shocked it isn’t worth a whole lot more than $42 (although still not a bad return on my original 75⍧ investment).

The author's original retirement savings plan (serious offers only)

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A Bee in God's Bonnet

Secret Wars 2 picks up a few months later, with the Beyonder coming to Earth, because apparently he was lonely and missed his friends. More importantly, he was still desperate to understand the phenomenon of human desire, which had been his raison d'être all along. He embarked on a bender that led him from hedonism to asceticism in eight issues, a journey replete with bad 80's perms, groupies and stretch limos. This was quite titillating for a pre-internet-and-VCR-eighth-grader, I'm only moderately embarrassed to admit.

Livin' Large ultimately sent the Big B careening into an existential crisis that would make Aristotle or Herman Hesse proud. He realized that unless the stakes were high enough— unless he faced an actual threat of death, or more specifically, of non-being— he'd never truly understand desire, which he obsessed over as the apparent animating force of humankind.

Steer clear of that induction grid, kids.

In the final issue he built a massive, Suess-ian contraption into which he poured himself and all of his power (I had forgotten until this morning that he nicknamed it "Mama"... subtle the Beyonder wasn't). It chugged and poured and belched through the apparatus, until it formed a human embryo within the “womb” of its final chamber. The Beyonder was all-in, ready to join the ranks of the living and to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Mama, all broke and tired.

SPOILER ALERT: He didn’t make it. Due to a confluence of events (which included nearly all of humanity's heroes and villains attempting to destroy Mama) the baby was stillborn. God was dead. Susan Storm had suffered a mis-carriage of her own while the rest of the FF was off in space, and she wept over the dead baby, there at the end of things. For a comic book this was some deep shit.

No Happy Ending for SW 2... or IS there??

It’s stayed with me over the years, even as the other details of the comic fade, because it presented the Christian notion of the Incarnation in an entirely new way-- for me, anyway. As I was only thirteen it probably led me to consider it for the very first time. It does raise a profound question. If Jesus came down to Earth, fully human and fully divine, could things have gone another way? How could be fully human if he wasn't at perpetual risk? What if he’d died at childbirth? What if he’d rejected his calling and set up shop on his own? If God poured out a substantial portion of His power… what would’ve happened if Jesus went rogue?

Of course, many Christians reject the notion that the Incarnation was anything other than God sending us a message— putting on a pageant to enlighten and warn us. But the Beyonder challenges us to re-think things. If God was simply chilling behind the scenes, resting comfortably in the Heavens and working on a little skit He’d put together, it means that Jesus was nothing more than a meat puppet; the crucifixion no more than a vanity project from the Soul of the Universe. What does that say about a God who produced such a needless grotesquerie, and forced us all to watch?

But. If God had truly poured Himself out— if He was all-in on humanity in the same way the Beyonder was— then everything was at stake. All of existence. All of reality. Reed Richards understood this, and one assumes that he's a secular humanist. What about believers?

God’s love for us, his desire to understand humanity and reconcile it to Himself, becomes a gift on a truly cosmic scale. God was at risk— He had skin in the game.

It certainly makes for a much better story when we up the stakes like that, doesn’t it?

I'm just grateful we never had to wade through the Six-Issue Limited Series Secret Wars 3: Raptured!!!